An Industrious Trucker Who Never Came Home

By PATRICK McGEEHAN and ANNIE CORREAL

Published: August 27, 2007

In the community of Costa Rican truckers who live in an industrial patch near the Pulaski Skyway, Arnaldo Lopez was said to have worked twice as hard as anyone else. He had the odometer to prove it.

Mr. Lopez spent many nights sleeping in the cab of his rig at a garbage transfer station in Queens, just so he could be first in line before dawn to haul New York City's trash to a landfill in Pennsylvania. While most of his colleagues made one such round trip a day, he usually made two, about 500 miles by the time he was done, a roommate said.

The police found Mr. Lopez dead in that cab on Friday, parked just a block from the pale green two-family house where he shared living quarters and meals with fellow immigrants from Central America. Mr. Lopez, 50, was stabbed several times during a robbery and died from a wound to the left side of his chest, according to Edward J. De Fazio, the Hudson County prosecutor.

His body, bound at the wrists and ankles by duct tape, was found four days after Mr. Lopez made his last run between New York City and Chester, Pa., Mr. De Fazio said. There was no money in the truck, but the police found thousands of dollars in Mr. Lopez's room at the house around the corner, Mr. De Fazio said. No arrests have been made.

The house, on Tonnelle Avenue, is several blocks from two small, gray apartment buildings tucked against the Skyway that serve as the unofficial gathering spot for the Costa Rican truckers, who call themselves camioneros and form the final link in a chain that starts under New York City kitchen sinks and ends in a landfill two states away.

Like Mr. Lopez, a number of them worked hauling trash and cement for Mariel Express, a company owned by a Cuban-American businessman, Emilio Alvarez Sr. They earn about $160 for each trip hauling a steel container filled with New York City trash to the landfill south of Philadelphia, said Marcos Bustamante, 59, a roommate of Mr. Lopez's.

Each evening, Mr. Lopez would park on a side street around the corner from the house and stop in to shower and study English or watch a little television, Mr. Bustamante said. He would also go upstairs to the home of his landlords, fellow Costa Rican immigrants, for a hot meal, before climbing back in his cab to start the cycle over.

Mr. Bustamante said he last noticed Mr. Lopez's truck when he saw it parked in its usual spot on Tuesday evening.

''He never came home,'' Mr. Bustamante said. ''They must have been waiting for him there.''

Mr. Lopez was so solitary that the other truckers said they knew little about him. (Indeed, neither they nor the police were certain that Arnaldo Lopez was his real name.) His friends said that he had a wife and two or three children in Costa Rica.

Mr. Bustamante said he thought Mr. Lopez had invested $12,000 in a truck and trailer, which may have been a first step toward setting up a business of his own. But other truckers who knew him believed that Mr. Lopez planned to return to Costa Rica permanently at the end of this year.

The truckers in the neighborhood said that Mariel employs as many as 50 truckers. Some are Puerto Rican and Cuban, but most are Costa Ricans who heard about Mr. Alvarez back home, and who now live just uphill from the trucking lot, as Mr. Lopez did.

Around half of Mariel's 60 trucks ship cement to plants around the region and transport concrete building blocks, they said. The others haul trash.

According to records of the federal Department of Transportation, Mariel Express was ordered out of service for interstate hauling in June for failure to pay a fine. Mr. Alvarez could not be reached for comment on Sunday.

Rolando Mendez, 52, said he and Mr. Lopez had been truckers in Costa Rica and came to New Jersey a decade ago.

Mr. Mendez said that Mr. Lopez, a slim man, had long been known as MacGyver, because when he was younger people thought he resembled the star of that 1980s television show.

Sunday afternoon, Mr. Mendez meticulously attached black bunting to the grille of his Mack truck -- just below the chrome bulldog hood ornament -- in a lot filled with trucks bearing Mariel's emblem of a silhouette of Cuba. His eyes teared up as he spoke.

''He was a very good person,'' Mr. Mendez said, ''and he never bothered anybody.''

PHOTO: A truck draped with black bunting in Jersey City yesterday, in memory of Arnaldo Lopez, a driver found killed in his truck. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN MARSHALL MANTEL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)